Monday, 13 October 2014

Happy Hens and Writing with Pens

Squidge started the week with some more cooking from the rest of his Hello Fresh box.

He started with this...

...turning this...

...into this...

...and in tandem made this...

...from this...

...into this :) He served it out for everyone too and was very proud of what he'd made :)

Afterwards he wanted to know where giraffes lived, so we looked that up.

We headed for forest school the next morning...

...where they used flints and steels to light fires.

There was lots of perseverance, and even more hunting for dry bracken!

We went with friends to the playground after, where Moppet pretended to be a monkey...

...and these two hung from stuff :)

And when we got home Moppet watered her bear, because when it rains you *must* water your bear. Or something.

We warmed up inside, Moppet watching Go Diego Go, Squidge watching The Regular Show, and Sprout watching Five Nights at Freddy's videos (and an advert for the upcoming Exodus film, which he's very excited about and told me all the story for).

Then they all decorated some cupcakes with Mr Potato Head faces :)

Sprout and I installed the zeppelin mod on Minecraft, along with the Amnesia mod. As well as playing around with those he built a giant version of his little cat plush :)

Home ed meet at the park the next day, a tad damp but loads of fun! As well as running round and playing for ages, Sprout chatted to another boy with an interest in science and shared his Focus magazine with him, and chatted to a girl and her dad about videogames, so afterwards he was telling me what a brilliant time he had :)

We saw lots of ladybirds and their larvae again, along with loads of greenfly, the concrete posts at the park seem to be teeming with them!

When we got home Sprout read his favourite bits of this out to me, when he could stop laughing :)

We all watched Tron together in the evening, and Real Steel the next day.

Sprout and I then installed a couple more mods to play with (MineChess and Minecraft Minesweeper!) while Squidge built some things on Disney Infinity and Moppet fed the animals.

We had a delivery in a big box later, so Squidge made a base in the box, while Moppet played with a big tub of ice and shaving foam, and Sprout played on the excellent Robocraft which he'd finally managed to get working after some technical teething problems. The shaving foam moved across to the base at some point too :)

Later on Sprout watched some Nerd Cubed, Moppet watched (and chatted along with) some Go Diego Go, and Squidge watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (telling me things he noticed) and then helped us cook a roast dinner :)

After a busy morning trying to sort out some renovation stuff, we went along to Come Into Play for one of their friends' birthday. Moppet spent a lot of time 'driving' around, waving back to me and shouting, "See y'in a min!" :)

She also built this settee, "for bouncin'" :)

Sprout spent some time explaining to me the farmer/livestock relationship of Predator and Alien, and the abilities of the Predator including infra red vision and the ability to become invisible.

On the way home he told me about his theory of selective breeding of Aliens by Predators to get more docile offspring, and that led to chatting about the domestication of wolves to dogs. Then randomly he spotted this van with the V from GTA V, which he thought was very cool!

Sprout had asked if we could go back to Highfield Happy Hens again, as he wanted to collect eggs, so Friday was the day! He started off slightly nervous of the livestock, but went close.

The boys were the pied pipers of chickenville as all the hens in the field ran along by the fence to follow them.

Sprout collected 18 eggs, Moppet 4 and Squidge just wanted to get 2. They peeked at the chickens in the laying area, and we chatted about why it's important to wash your hands after. Also, Sprout made lots of egg puns. He loves puns at the moment so this was an ideal opportunity to showcase them ;)

Sprout with his haul :)

Moppet and Squidge with theirs :)

We went down to the play area afterwards...

...then after our picnic they played some crazy golf...

...milked a 'cow'...

...played on a bus...

...played farms...

...built Lego...

...did some anagrams...

...(he loves the word 'banana' at the moment so this was perfect)...

...Moppet matched some animals with their babies...

...they played on the tractors...

...Moppet sold me an invisible strawberry for forty pounds...

...they fed the pigs...

...took funny photos...

...bounced...

...played giant connect 4, did the beanbag toss...

...fed the chickens...

...watched this very patient mummy, and Squidge asked some questions about how they got their milk...

...Sprout found his favourite animal in the end was the goat, and gave her all his animal food and lots of loves :)

We did the farm question maze, which was frustrating as two of the answers were wrong O.O

Talked about the difference between traditional windmills and wind turbines.

Sprout wanted to know the relevance of the giant wooden cross and the nails, so I explained what some people believe about a god and Jesus, and the significance of this to the people here.

They played in the sandpit...

...Sprout drew some swirls with his hands and reminisced about when he did the art on the beach with the rake and asked if we could do that again soon...

...then they swung lots...

...and we eventually made it to the cafe (caffeine please!) where Squidge noticed these yin yang salt and pepper pots and wanted to know what the symbol meant...

...and Sprout read me the information off the Ribena carton about blackcurrant varieties and mountain names...

...and Moppet ate chocolate cake with ketchup...

...and drunk milk out of this cute little milk bottle!

On our way out Sprout spotted this fabulous cauliflower in the farm shop, so we bought it and I explained what a Fibonacci spiral is and he was kind of awestruck looking at it.

As we drove home and the younger two slept, Sprout was bubbling over with enthusiasm, asking about hens and eggs and egg production and cockerels and pigs and pig reproduction and abbatoirs and veg production, and came up with a plan to start a farm and a farm shop, along with how he'd lay it out and what we'd start with and how it would progress. It was brilliant! He wants to plan it on Minecraft and sort out a set up budget too.

We ended the week with some more shaving foam for Moppet, and lots of playing on Clumsy Ninja and Createrria for the boys :)